The Irrevocable Nihilism of Pakistan

United by religion, divided by the lack thereof

Chaos comes from ignorance. Chaos comes from confusion. Chaos comes from dogmas and the inability to broaden one’s horizons limiting the mind to be a dark narrow prison. Ideology is what moved many Indian Muslims to start a struggle for independence. The unified ideology was one of religion, one of Islam. By the name of Islam, people were driven to give up their lands, property, their homes and birthplace to enter a region where they would be able to practice that very ideology on a national level. But today we stand apart from where we began, scattered in many sects, each with their own understanding of the true purpose of Pakistan and with even more widely varying beliefs of what it means to be a Muslim.

Chaos results in meaninglessness. People scurry around for identities, purposes and substance within their lives and try to come up with many divergent understandings of objective truths. In such a case, unity is improbable. In particular, for a nation built upon a unified ideology, it is imperative to retain it within masses. But if masses organically go astray and afar from what was the true origin of the nation’s existence, it results in utter chaos. For now a fabricated identity exists on the papers that has nothing to do with the reality.

Pakistan, an Islamic Republic has no specific understanding of Islam in its culture, laws and governance. There are no specific Islamic virtues being upheld by the elite to provide a blueprint for the common folk. Yet there is a pretense that the identity exists and that it is our end goal and that one day we would surely achieve it.

No one can say for certainty what that ideal state would look like. Everyone has their own understanding of it. Some seculars believe the nation would be liberated by the extremism and everyone would follow whatever they desire with limited state intervention. They are not focused on the exploitation that comes when state turns a blind eye to national affairs, they do not understand that liberalism itself is a promoter of capitalist regimes and under the rule of the capital elite the workers and the poor suffer. They cannot decipher that in liberal and secular states human rights are violated as well by stripping away people’s ability to actively participate in and practice their religion. This instills even more confusion between rights and wrongs. We want to meet the world at its pace but who is to determine if the world really is going in the right direction.

In the lower classes, there is a need to cling on to all the divisive elements that provide them with sustenance. They are not concerned with the larger goods and tolerance for believing their group ideology being true is what keeps them having a sense of self sustenance as well as the promise that with all the suffering and depravity of the world, they are promised a better afterlife. This ones unlike them would be punished. There would be justice then.

These people are driven to the roads for protests not to bring change but to maintain the status quo for they have made themselves believe that fighting for themselves means to retain and not gain anything new. Change is not possible if the lower classes have no interest in bringing about that change. But inaction in that sector does bring changes, peaks in poverty, crimes and exploitations.

The sectarianism is often inevitable for these classes. That is the only sense of political community that they can build in their lives for they are deprived of necessary education. They do not get to imagine their lives outside from their classes, they are not even driven with the desire of social mobility.

Those of the people who are not actively participating in sectarianism still have their entire lives revolving around these ideologies. This is the stagnant silent majority that believes in the same things as the extremist sectarian communities but is limited by tight schedules and a family life. This division of lower class community is not rapidly shifting but are clinging even strongly to their previously held beliefs and at times acting upon them results in unexpected crimes and acts of violence.

Despite this, our religious beliefs are shallow. The people are not more focused with the beliefs and teachings themselves but more so upon the optics. They wish to maintain an apparently Islamic state, Islamic culture and Islamic society. On an individual level the drive to follow any of the religious principles is neither important to anyone nor is it preached. That is because our individual identities are taken up either by herd mentality or by the exploitative hands of our employers, the materialism that has been instilled in us by capitalist dominance.

It is not only that we no longer have a unified group identity, it is also that we no longer have individual identities as well. The desperation to belong within groups and have a sense of connection is arisen through urbanization. We are scattered both mentally, spiritually and individually. Everyone tries to derive cohesion and stability in his life but the chaos in the world has caused us all to have blurred understanding of faith and religion in itself.

A large portion of the young Pakistani generation suffers the consequences of this lack of understanding. Born in a nation that was solely based on religious ideology but was always unable to incorporate a religious state meant that we borrowed the stuffing of our structure from anywhere we could. Consequently, the identity itself was in direct conflict with the actual reality. There is not even a utopia that most can dream of where our nation would one day stand. It is so divided that there are hardly any political communities at all that have an actual motto or understanding of what they stand for and how they would bring about their manifesto in our nation.

This depravity is what causes meaningless. Contrary to our beginnings, we now stand afar from purpose and a clear sight of what we are, where we are going and what we would become. That makes our nation more so nihilistic than even the secularist nations that do not have any religious ideology backing them up through legislature. It appears that we can be mold into anything but bringing about any change would cause much destruction and revolution. A liberal reform is hardly possible with the existence of many dogmas. It appears that we stand without meaning and a distorted image of what we tried to become. We are united by religion but divided by the lack thereof.

Tags: illiterate masses, islam, islamic democratic state, islamic state, pakistan, pakistan corruption, pakistan creation, pakistan crisis, pakistan-people, pakistani culture, religion, religious right, subcontinent

Category: Politics